


Unquantifiable

by jenni3penny



Category: NCIS
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-04
Updated: 2019-11-04
Packaged: 2021-01-22 14:50:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21303881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jenni3penny/pseuds/jenni3penny
Summary: "It couldn't have possibly started with a gun to her head - because if someone had put a gun to her head they'd already be dead. He woulda killed them."
Relationships: Jethro Gibbs/Jacqueline "Jack" Sloane
Comments: 19
Kudos: 131





	Unquantifiable

_"How much is she worth to you?"_

It couldn't have happened that way, couldn't have been real.

_"Huh? How much?"_

That wasn't quantifiable. Nobody should be able to ask that. That's private. That's the sorta thing he only tells her. It's nobody's business what -

_"As much as my wife was to me?"_

More, she's worth _more_.

Wait…

That wasn't how it began (_was it_?).

_"How much?!"_

It couldn't have possibly started with a gun to her head - because if someone had put a gun to her head they'd already be dead.

He woulda killed them.

"_Everything_."

***

Two days before the shooting and she laughs when his phone rings at 6:16 in the morning, interrupting the slow and lazy drift of his kisses across her shoulder. He's flush up the back of her and it's been fifteen minutes of dirty mouthed suggestions against the back of her ear while his hands took their fill.

"You gotta be kidding me," he growls, the hand that had been idly stroking her breasts stuttering still and cupping around one of them. He keeps teasing her nipple as the sound dies, rolling it between his fingers as he kisses his way up her hairline. The nuzzle he gives right behind her ear is slapped still by the phone ringing again. Another song sound clashes and he realizes that it's not just his phone now, it's both his and hers.

"_Really_??" he mutters, kissing chastely against her ear before stroking his palm flat down her side and using her hip to push back. "They gotta use you to get to me now?"

"Send Tim. Stay here." She reaches back behind her after saying it, the back of her hand rubbing knuckles against his bare chest before she turns over to meet him.

Jack watches him reach for his phone, a frown crimping up her features as she stretches up onto him, enjoying the way he hugs her close into his side even as he answers his cell. "Gibbs."

A whimpering noise inadvertently comes up her throat but she goes with it, snuggling up higher on his shoulder so that she can kiss his jaw. He swallows hard as the whole naked length of her rubs up the side of him and presses heat between them.

"Yup," he answers the curt and definitely female voice that is echoing over the line. "Text it to me."

Jack is already frowning as the call ends and the phone gets lost in bedsheets, "No, no, no, no, please just - "

"Change of plans," he chuckles as he flattens her onto her back with a forced rush of movement, rising over her with a growl that lands on her tongue, his mouth pressed hot against hers.

He's been teasing her for too long already, his fingers warm and steady and so promising.

"Not fair," she half whines after him.

"Promise I'll be back soon."

"Send Tim. He's all grown up. He can handle it just fine." She purposely moans out a dejected noise as she catches along his hip, nails just barely digging against him. "Jethro."

"I can't not go to work just because I think you're pretty, sweetheart. Explain that to Leon."

"It's your first day off in two weeks," she calls after him, watching the whole of him disappear into the adjoining bathroom.

"Two hours. I'll be right back."

It's never only _just_ two hours.

They both know that.

***

One day before the shooting and he can't help the smile that hijacks him when she pauses on the landing and flicks him a wink. He laughs silently when she scrunches her face up too, purposely being playful before she pushes off the rail with a grin and turns.

He just banks his shoulders back into his chair and watches her take the second set of steps at a good clip, calves tight and tensed as she goes up them. He can feel Ellie pause along the side of his desk and he exhales hard, letting his face go passive and blank before he turns to meet her suddenly incurable grin.

"_What_?"

She's entirely unaffected by his attempt at being a grumpy old man, her shrug making her momentarily seem young and excited as she continues to smile. "Is she our new mommy?"

He absolutely ignores how swiftly his gut clenches in hopeful anticipation, just at the implication of the impossible.

It does feel a little like that, though… She's what they'd been missing. She's what he's been missing.

"Don't you have work to do?"

***

Just awhile before it happens and he's not entirely sure how she ended up beside him but he's definitely questioning the decision. Because he's got a grinding feeling low down in his stomach and his gut is churning. And of course she had insisted on joining _him_ amidst a manhunt - because she's as curious as a goddamn precocious cat but she's got fewer luck-lives left and he's not the biggest fan of tempting fate. Not when she's involved, especially.

Because she's where she shouldn't be and he can't entirely explain what makes him feel that way but he turns to look at her, studying how smoothly she keeps moving beyond him.

She's beautiful all the damn time. Even when going exactly where she shouldn't go.

(At least, that's what his gut says.)

She's an instinctively good agent and he trusts in that but something tugs at him, something pauses his steps so that he can watch over her rather than guarding himself. Something in his gut betrays him, sacrifices his own safety for hers (and that's how he knows he truly loves her).

"Jack?"

It only takes about three seconds for the blow to come from the right, hitting his temple and blacking out the world from existence.

The last thing he sees is fear in her eyes as she turns.

***

"How much?!"

"_Everything_." His answer certainly doesn't help the fact that her knees are _already_ weak and she's already shaky, dazed. The desperate sweetness of him is maybe the only thing keeping a clamp on his rage. She can just barely see his eyes (damn, she can't _see_ straight) and they're absolutely murderous.

The only reason Wade had gotten in behind her and close enough to catch at her throat was because he'd taken the butt of the Glock to her temple when she'd been worrying over Gibbs.

Her vision is still a little blurred and skewed from the hit, her thoughts swamped and feeling sluggish. She tries to shake her brain clear of the drag and he just tightens his catch along her shoulders and throat in response.

She feels Gibbs flinch more than seeing it and she lifts her hands at him to try and stall up any rash reaction. "You can't ask him that, Elliot. It's not - "

"Shut up."

She doesn't need to see what's happening to extrapolate the information and reform the scene in her head. Wade took her up as a hostage, as protection, because he's a foot shorter than Gibbs and fifty pounds lighter and no match for a former sniper with control of his firearm. She has no doubt, even as she blinks her eyes shut against the nausea inducing blurriness, that Gibbs has his weapon up and ready and aimed in their/her direction.

"Of course he's going to say more. He didn't know Natalie, did he?" She tries reason, knowing that it's not a likely option.

"_Shut up._" Their suspect's hysteria amplifies each time he repeats the phrase and his arm tightens on her even farther, getting closer to actually choking her. His emotions are more than just imbalanced, he's become utterly unstable and unpredictable.

"Tell us about her. Without the gun," she pleads, not all that sure that it's going to work. "He'll listen. I'll listen."

She hopes to God Gibbs'll listen because they don't have another (safe) choice.

There are some universal inevitabilities and one of them is that somebody is going to end up injured or dead if Gibbs sees them put a gun to _her_ head.

Death warrants have been signed over sillier things.

***

It's Ellie who he sees behind them and he's never been more proud of her than he is in that moment. He's also never been so goddamn angry at her for not listening when he said to stay at the office.

It's Eleanor Bishop, too young and beautiful to be caught up in this mess. She's too perfect to be the only one behind a man with a gun. Where the fuck are his boys? Why'd they let her go off alone?

This particular formula, this assemblage of parts, it's all too close to choking off his heart. Jack and Ellie are too close to being everything he's got left.

What are they worth?

He doesn't have an applicable unit of measurement…

***

She shot second when she should have shot first and if anything is representative of that fact it's Jacqueline Sloane's face, half painted in their suspect's blood as Gibbs reaches out for her.

(They have never been more her family than they are when both in pain, physical and emotional.

It's unbearable to watch, the way they touch each other both desperately and reverently at once. This intimate vulnerability is too heavy for her to carry on her own. Why is she the only one here? Where _is_ everyone else??)

Ellie just numbly studies them at first, feeling like she's been hired as a player in a tragedy but never handed the script. She's shot a man dead (again) and that guilt is pooling as thick sticky blood at her feet and she still can't seem to move forward, closer to them.

This isn't her place, it isn't her scene but it's still all her fault for not being fast enough.

"Eleanor, please?!"

Right, the phone in her hand.

Her (second) father dying on the floor.

She wishes they had just let her learn all her lines first.

Then maybe she could have done better.

***

He isn't surprised by how they're curled together when he gets there.

(Because, realistically, he should have expected it - something in him was aware. He's seen the signs, the clues, the looks and the teasing. He's heard Jack's voice go flushed warm and somehow also delicate as she speaks to his boss. He's seen Gibbs watch her tightly, leashing his attention to her whether out of interest or concern, _whenever_ she was around.)

There's no element of surprise in seeing them tucked together on the ground, joined hands putting pressure on a wound that's bled too much already.

Instead of a surprise, for him, it's almost a relief.

He'd need someone as strong as her, someone who can match him.

Tim takes a deep breath as he moves closer. "Ellie?"

"I'm fine," she answers blankly, waving toward the way Jack is whispering something unintelligible along Gibbs' forehead. She's got a phone in her hand and so he assumes they've already called for help. "Him."

He's already got his jacket half off as he steps past her, headed their way.

"Where the hell were you?" Jack's accusal slaps him still a moment, fury glittering her eyes dark and deep while he offers her his balled up jacket. He is otherwise still in the face of her guardianship, letting go of the fabric so that she can make the best use of it while his hands go loose and lax.

"Don't yell at 'im, hon," Gibbs slurs out, his eyes shut as his breathing trembles. "Not his fault."

Gibbs may believe that, but Tim's fairly sure that neither one of them do.

***

It's been two days of hopeful expectations being waylaid by physical reality (it takes _so. much. time_. to heal). Every step toward getting him healthy only seems to cant them backwards by half and she could just scream already. They get so close only to be shoved back again.

It's been two days of waiting but Nick has now been at the end of the hall watching her for the last four hours and she swears by all things holy that if he doesn't just sit the fuck down -

"I will when you will," he answers the commentary that she hadn't realized she'd said aloud, his face a placard for resilience.

Jack shakes her head minutely, feeling brittle in brash hospital lighting. "Then I guess we'll stand."

"Mexican standoff," he murmurs and then winks and she laughs so suddenly that the sound of it seems louder than it should.

She can feel tears crop up and pool around her eyes as she sniffs and laughs again, softer, "You're not Mexican."

"Still made you laugh." He takes a step in, a hand stretching out to catch her forearm. "Just watching you is exhausting me, Jack. Sit down."

She hears her own voice say the words before she can trap them back behind her teeth, "I _need_ him."

And she sees how hard he flinches in the face of her stripped-bare honesty. He's too young, she thinks, too young to understand. He doesn't know her limits - and though they may be high, they are _not_ stratospheric. "I know."

She doesn't think he does know, actually.

***

She crumples as soon as Ducky sits and puts his arms around her, kisses the side of her head the way her father used to when she was small.

(Her father never smelled so delightfully herbal and minty, though. He always smelled of grease and garages, smoke and beer, woodgrain and dust.

He also never just let her sob so freely against his shoulder until her body was just as wasted as all the mingled emotions inside her.)

"He's through the worst, my dear."

"That's why I'm crying," she admits, voice shaky as she rubs her cheek on his lapel. "Stupid bastard never listens to me."

Ducky laughs into her hair, huddling them closer in the plastic chairs that line the waiting room wall. "Jacqueline, he listens to you ten times more than most anyone else."

"He's been so afraid that it would be me, ya know?"

"History hasn't been kind," Ducky explains, stating the obvious because both of them just need to hear each other.

Her breathing has started to settle, more even than before, "I think I thought it would be me, too."

***

_"How much is she worth to you? Huh? How much? As much as my wife was to me? How much?!"_

_"Everything_," he says once again, his throat sharded with crushed glass, lips feeling dry. _Everything_ from the hips up hurts him even while he's completely still and staring at the ceiling.

Damn ugly ceiling too… He's gotta be in the hospital again. Hospitals and prisons are the only places that dare to have ceilings so goddamn ugly.

"What, babe?"

She still insists on calling him that and the fact that he's riding a swell of considerable pain is the primary reason it sounds so good to him instead of driving him crazy.

God, she sounds good to him. The heated depth of her voice, the way it's soft and lush without being too raspy. He's always found comfort when falling into her voice, the way it cradles around him, curls him up into safety.

"He asked." He'd asked the impossible. How could he have tabulated her worth? It was a universal impossibility…

"Sweetie, I don't know what you're saying," she says so softy, leaning up into his sightline. The ceiling becomes a bland background to the beauty of her, the way her prettiness deepens in the happy lines around her eyes. "_Hi there_. God, I've missed those eyes."

She's one to talk… _Hello, Gorgeous…_ "Hi."

"You're gonna be okay."

When she says it? He believes it. He believes her, in her, in "_Everything_, Jack."

She smiles over him, her entire face brightening as she brushes her fingers down his jaw. She looks like she's been crying and he feels part of his body shiver though he couldn't say what part or where. "I heard you."

"He dead?"

"Eleanor took care of it." Suddenly he remembers the flashed pale pain of Ellie's face, the way fear had widened her eyes and shock had set her face stony. His shoulders tense and his lungs light themselves on fire in answer to the shift. Jack obviously sees or feels the movement because her lips lower to his cheek and settle there. "She's fine. She was a little shaken up but she's okay."

"You hurt?"

"Not at all." Her sigh against his ear sounds like the same small sound she sometimes makes while they're making love (right when her fingers curl up and dig furious lines down from his shoulders), the same little noise of utter completion. "Been missing you."

Gibbs inhales shallowly, finding that the house fire in the basement of his lungs doesn't flare quite as hellaciously high if he breathes in slowly. "Didn't go anywhere."

"You damn well better not, Gunny. I'm taking you home soon."

He imagines that her version of "soon" is likely to take far longer than he'd like.

But it's all right… Her happiness is more than worth the wait.

She's _more_ than worth it.

**Author's Note:**

> Oh my hell, this one took forever to write... Sequel? Probably?  
My thanks to Coolbyrne for hanging in there on this one. She was super patient.


End file.
